Interloper
by Highwing
Summary: "I lifted my bushy tail and sat my furry butt down to wait for Felldoh."


It was a perfectly good rock, in a perfectly nice little shady nook. So I lifted my bushy tail and sat my furry butt down to wait for Felldoh.

I knew from my observations that he often took this particular path on his way to and from Marshank. The grim squirrel's preoccupation with that vermin stronghold would quite literally be the death of him ... unless I did something about it.

The day was actually quite beautiful. A stranger passing through these parts might never guess at the life and death struggles convulsing these lands. Me, I was far stranger than the average stranger, as it were, and knew more about the recent strife and sufferings here than any wandering vagabond had any business knowing.

My providential grotto sat atop the high cliff, and afforded a spectacular view of the eastern sea. Or would it be more proper to say the North Sea? No, probably not; this was not my world, and the creatures here would not use any of the terms with which I was familiar, even if it was supposedly the same body of water.

I heard him approaching then, glanced down the path and saw him tramping his way toward me along the twisting clifftop trail. He carried the spear launcher that had helped him rain down so much terror on his enemies within Fort Marshank. He made no attempt at stealth, blundering along as if he owned the path all to himself, completely wrapped up in his obsessive mania for revenge. So absorbed was he in his fervid warlike thoughts that he didn't even notice me nestled upon my shadow-sheltered perch. Understandable, I suppose, since the westering sun had me wreathed in deep gloom. Even had his mind not been in such turmoil, he might very well have passed me by without realizing I was there at all.

"Felldoh," I said softly.

He turned on me, spear in one paw and launcher in the other. His jaw was clenched, and a wrathful fire burned in his eyes. Behind him his bush twitched and switched in agitation. I had to smile at that. The first time I ever wore the form of a squirrel, I couldn't still my tail for the life of me; every fleeting emotion that flashed through my mind would send it into the wildest of gyrations. How any creature could put up with such an appendage I didn't know, but then I suppose that if you live your whole life with one, you get used to it. Me, I had to pace back and forth around the transport bay for half a day before I was in any shape to jaunt into one of the Furred Realities.

The savage expression on his face would have been sufficient to freeze the blood of any foe foolish enough to make an enemy of this fierce squirrel. Even I was a little intimidated, in spite of the fact that I knew he could do me no real harm. He could cause me any amount of pain he cared to, and that was an unpleasantry I wished to avoid if at all possible. But as far as doing me any permanent physical damage, he could run me through the gut, cut off my head and chop me into little pieces, and it wouldn't be anything they couldn't fix once I got back to headquarters.

Happily, such a tragedy was not to occur this day. Seeing what appeared to be a fellow squirrel seated unthreateningly upon a rock, smiling and unarmed, Felldoh lowered his weapons and visibly relaxed. "Who are you?" he asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"A friend."

"Oh? I don't recognize you. How do you know my name?"

"I know quite a bit about you. I've had my eye on you for a long time. I'm here to help you ... and your friends Martin and Laterose."

"Martin? Rose?" His spear fell limply to his side. "I haven't seen them since we were separated at sea. They're all right? You know where they are?"

I nodded. "They should be just about at Noonvale by now, or very nearly so. They are safe ... but I don't know how much longer they will remain that way."

Some of his tenseness returned. "What do you mean?"

"They're raising an army ... mostly shrews and otters, with a few Noonvalers as well. Then they will be returning to Marshank ... and to battle."

Felldoh eyes me warily. "I would call that good news. So why do your words fill me with foreboding?"

"Creatures die in battle."

"It is the tyrant Badrang and his vermin scum who will do all the dying, if they face an army that has me and Martin at its head."

"Perhaps. But then, maybe you will not be here to help Martin when he arrives."

The Northland squirrel took a challenging step toward me. "Is that some kind of threat?"

I sighed and shook my head. "Always so ready for a fight. I've seen what you've been doing, Felldoh. And I know where your headstrong ways will lead you. Many of Marshank's defenders have fallen to your spears in recent days, but you cannot defeat them all by yourself. And yet that is exactly what you will end up trying to do ... and that will only bring disaster. For you, and for your friends."

I could tell he was shaken, having some stranger telling him so plainly what was in his heart. But he still wasn't ready to accept me at face value. Not yet. "You've been spying on me!"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," I admitted. "But it's more than that. You know it is."

"How do you know the things you know?" he demanded.

"Because I have seen events that are yet to happen - from your point of view."

He scrutinized me mercilessly. "So, you are some kind of seer? You're magic? Well, I don't believe in magic!"

I couldn't stop the smirk from coming to my face. "Where I come from, a talking squirrel would be considered magic."

More of his obstinate front gave way to confusion. "But ... you're a squirrel ... "

"Let's just say that I am both more and less than I appear." I dug into my pocket and withdrew my own secret weapon - a golfball-sized sphere of glowing, shimmering silver, like a globe of hyperactive mercury. "Now if you want to see some _real_ magic ... "

I threw the quantum ball at Felldoh's head. With his spear in one paw and the launcher in the other, he was in no position to fend off the incoming object. He did duck out of its way, but quantum balls are tricky things, all bound up with the energy of probability, and it followed the squirrel's dodge and spattered upon his forehead. A silvery cascade of fast-disappearing pixie dust showered down the front of his borrowed entertainer's tunic as my wizard's spell took hold of him. His jaw went slack and his eyes unfocused as my mental pictures unfolded in his mind.

Yes, all totally against regulations, I know. But to accomplish my mission here, I'd have to bend a few rules.

This particular quantum ball I'd used to enchant young Felldoh contained a probability imprint from further down his dimensional thread - or, to put it in non-technical terms, a glimpse of his future. Playing out in his head right now, I knew, would be the whole unhappy incident of his single combat with the stoat tyrant Badrang, during which Felldoh would beat Badrang to within an inch of his life before the tyrant's hordebeasts ganged up on the squirrel and killed him. I wasn't familiar enough with this technology myself to know whether these events would unreel before his mind's eye like a movie or T.V. show, or if he would feel like he was actually living them, right up to the moment of his death. Either way, it was bound to be a traumatic experience for the young creature.

He shook his head as if shaking off a bad dream as he came out of his trance. He stared at me in silent amazement for several long moments. "It ... seemed so real. Is this really going to happen?"

I nodded. "Tomorrow ... Unless you decide upon a different course of action."

He chewed this over. "If this happens as you have shown me ... then I know I will get close enough to the tyrant to kill him. I will not waste that opportunity, as I would have. Instead of beating him as he had me beaten when I was his slave, I will slay him the very first chance I get. Then, my death will be worthwhile."

"Not so fast," I cautioned. "There's more yet to see." I came out with my second quantum ball; this time he did not try to duck when I burst it upon his face.

When he emerged from the second trance, there was a tear in his eye. "No! Not Rose! Not like that!"

"It might not happen that way," I said, "if you are there to assist her during the battle."

Felldoh shook his head, nodded, shook his head again, as if engaged in some unheard debate raging inside his skull. "Wait. If I can kill Badrang tomorrow, knowing what I know now, then he won't be alive during the battle to kill Rose. There might not even be a battle, if the tyrant is not there to lead his horde."

"I wouldn't count on that," I said. "Time has a way of asserting itself. Where I come from, the things I've shown you have already happened. It took quite an effort just for me to get here at all. These events will be resistant to change. If you face Badrang on that beach tomorrow, you are certain to die ... but Badrang might not, in spite of your best efforts. He might still escape, and thus be present at the battle to kill Laterose. The only way you'll be able to help her during that fight will be to keep yourself alive until then ... and that means not fighting Badrang tomorrow."

The squirrel before me chewed on his lip. "I saw ... I slew about a score of those vermin scum before they overcame me. Even if I don't slay Badrang, that will be a score that Martin and Rose wouldn't have to fight ... "

"But you still know how it would turn out; it wouldn't do Rose any good. The only way to break this cycle is to smash it completely. If you and Martin can jointly lead the assault on Marshank, then maybe - just maybe - things can go differently."

Felldoh stared hard at me. "Are you me when I'm older?"

"What do _you_ think?"

"I ... I don't know what to think."

"Do I look that old? For that matter, do I look like you? Or sound like you?"

"Not really. At least I don't think you do ... "

"How can I be you if you're going to die tomorrow?"

"Maybe you're from the time I didn't die ... the time you came back to warn me ... and now you're warning me again ... "

The poor beast was practically swaying on his footpaws, staggered by the implications of it all. I had to admit, for a creature from a society whose technological level was only medieval - if even that - he was grasping these concepts surprisingly well.

He looked at me imploringly. "What should I do?"

"Are you asking me?"

"Yes."

I flashed him a sympathetic smile. "You already know what I would tell you to do. I didn't come all this way just to have you leave things the way they were."

"What if I do? What if I still go down to face Badrang tomorrow anyway?"

"Then I will be very disappointed. But there's not a thing I can do to stop you, if that's your decision. The choice is yours."

"Why did you want to help us like this? Who are you?"

"A friend, as I said. Someone who's taken an interest in you from afar - much farther than you can possibly imagine - and doesn't want to see you waste your life unnecessarily. I wanted to give you a second chance. And Rose, too."

He studied me wordlessly for a long time then, a whole universe of emotions playing across his face. I couldn't even begin to imagine what was going through his head just then, but I quickly found out.

"Why now?" he burst out in an anguished half-sob. "Why do you fall out of the sky into the middle of my life now, when my heart has been hardened by seasons of slavery, and my soul is consumed by the thirst for retribution against my tormentors? Why not in my childhood, when there was still something left inside of me worth saving?"

His impassioned plea hit me like a brick bat. I had to collect myself for a few moments before I could safely answer without my voice breaking.

"Don't say that!" I responded with more vehemence than I intended. "You're still young. If you survive the battle of Marshank, you could live for many, many seasons more - and have many chances for happiness. Don't say there's nothing left of you worth saving."

"I can't help the way I feel. After all I've seen and suffered, sometimes I truly believe my hate is the only thing that keeps me going."

I almost wanted to reach out to him then with a comforting paw. I suppose I could have; there were no quantum/dimensional rules against it. It's not like physical contact between us would make us go poof! and vanish into the cosmic void. But it's always best to stay as objective and impersonal as possible during missions like these.

"Maybe you'll feel differently when you're standing over Badrang's slain corpse, with the cheers of your victorious friends sounding in your ears. Maybe you'll find something to live for then ... with Rose and Martin in Noonvale, or wandering the lands helping goodbeasts in need."

"I want you to come back to our camp, and show the others what you showed me."

I spread my empty paws. "Sorry. I've got nothing left to show anybeast. Besides, I've already overstayed my welcome - I'll have to be leaving soon."

"So, you're just gonna vanish into thin air once I continue down this path?"

"Something like that."

"Then how do I know you're real, and not just some figment of my imagination?"

Now I was mildly insulted. No one likes to go to the kind of trouble I had, only to be dismissed as an hallucination. I got up from my cushy rock (it was starting to make my fuzzy butt sore anyway) and walked right up to him. I pounded him gently on his broad shoulders with both paws; we were so close that I could feel his breath on my whiskers, and I was sure he could feel mine on his as well.

"Tell me," I challenged, "does _that_ feel like a figment of your imagination?"

"What's your name?" he asked, staring into my eyes from mere inches away.

I smiled at him wistfully. "Name's not important in cases like this." I disengaged from our almost-embrace, walked several paces back toward my rock in its little shadowy nook, then turned to face him once more, still standing. "I have to go now. I wish you luck, whatever you decide. I only want things to turn out for the best. For you, and the others."

"I believe you." He shuffled his footpaws uncertainly; he looked at that moment for all the worlds like a lost child, in spite of his brawn and the weapons in his paws. "Do you want me to leave now, so that you can, um, vanish in peace?"

"That would probably be best," I nodded. "I've already overburdened your mind with my message. You might find my method of departure unsettling to witness."

"Very well. Thank you for coming. I will think about everything you've shown me, and told me. And I will try to do the right thing."

"I'm sure you will."

The last I saw of Felldoh the warrior squirrel was the brush of his overlarge tail as he rounded a bend in the trail. Then a silvery haze fell over my vision, and I was whisked away from this reality of valiant woodland creatures and tyrant vermin.

I would never see Felldoh again.

00000000000

Our esteemed Director cornered me in the corridor as I exited the transport bay. Today she wore one of her preferred feline guises - a neutral cat fashion, somewhere halfway between Troy Howell and Snitter. In her paw was a printout flimsy, which she wasted no time in flapping and rustling under my nose.

"What the hell are you doing, Wing?"

"Hello, Tsar. How are you today?"

"You've screwed up the whole timeline! Because of what you've just done, Redwall never gets built!"

I raised my eyebrows. Well, that had been one possible outcome that I'd extrapolated. Tsarmina sure had gotten those results back fast. But then I reminded myself that time took no time at all, since anything that could ever possibly happen already had, somewhere. Or so went the multiverse theory. "What about Felldoh?"

"Took an arrow through the skull during the second day of the battle. Is he what this is all about?"

"I always thought his death was a waste. But maybe he was destined to die sometime during that battle, once he'd gotten to the point where he was so embittered inside. If only I'd gotten to him earlier. Oh, well. At least Rose made it through all right, or so I assume, since Redwall never got built. Martin must have stayed in Noonvale with Rose, and never journeyed south to Mossflower."

"He never made it to Mossflower, all right. Martin and Rose were both killed in the battle of Marshank."

You could have knocked me over with a feather. This scenario had also been a possible outcome of my meddling, but the probability quotient had been so small that I'd disregarded it. "No ... "

"Oh, yes. Here, see for yourself." Tsarmina pushed the flimsies at me until I was forced to accept them from her. I gnawed my lower lip (yes, squirrels do have lips, just not very big ones) as I read the results displayed there before me.

"I swear," she huffed, "this is even worse than the time I screwed it up. At least Rose and Martin were still alive at the end of that debacle, and Noonvale remained well protected. Look at that timeline now, will you! A dark age in the Northlands that lasts ten generations, and a wildcat tyranny in Mossflower that lasts twice that!"

"I would have thought you'd be in favor of that last part," I muttered as I studied the printout of the temporal/dimensional configuration. "But this Chanchie character looks interesting. I don't remember him from any of the other timelines ... "

"That's beside the point!" Angrily, Tsarmina snatched the printout back from me. "Because of you, no Martin, no Redwall ... I'm halfway surprised Salamandastron didn't fall into the sea!"

I regarded my beloved Director. While nominally in charge of our sector, Tsarmina was half my age, and I'd been doing this kind of thing longer than she had ... independently, that is. This was my first time as part of a organization like this, and my reputation as a maverick followed me wherever I went. I knew this latest adventure of mine wouldn't help my reputation any.

"You're overreacting, Tsar. Redwall's still there, and always will be. I just spun off a new timeline that doesn't include it."

"You're cluttering up the continuum!"

"Not really. Remember your basic multiverse theory, Tsar. Any reality that can possibly exist already does, even if we're not aware of it ourselves. And even if my actions were directly responsible for the creation of this particular timeline, you still can't lay any blame on me. If I hadn't gone to meet with Felldoh, some other parallel version of me would have, and the reality in which Martin, Laterose and Felldoh all die would still exist. It was inevitable."

Tsarmina gnashed her fangs in frustration. "Yes, but every time we discover a new timeline and map it out, it confuses things more. Now some jaunter who wants to visit Redwall might find themselves sidetracked into your new probability avenue where Redwall doesn't exist at all!"

"Only if they're not careful. Any halfway decent navigator can get where he wants to go, with a little persistence. It's like back in the early days of the Internet - if you couldn't find what you were looking for with one search engine, try another, or try following the links on related sites. I haven't erased any of the realities where Redwall exists - I only added one in which it doesn't. There are still more Redwalls than anyone could want: the one that gets conquered by Swartt Sixclaw, or the one that gets taken by Cluny the Scourge; the one that's decimated by Dryditch Fever; the one where it's overwhelmed by the hosts of Malkariss; the one where it comes under the rule of Ublaze Madeyes; and any other number of timelines where Redwall never fell to any enemy. There are even realities where Redwall endures into the modern age, and those woodlanders develop technology beyond our own ... which means there might very well be Redwallers popping in and out of OUR universe and spinning off alternate versions of our reality for themselves ... "

Tsar's whiskers quivered in frustration; even the most experienced of us could still be thrown for a loop by the mental gymnastics required of multiverse theory. "Yes, but it's not one of my parallel selves that's stuck with you - it's this particular me, here and now." She heaved a resigned sigh. "What am I going to do with you?"

"How's about we ponder that conundrum over a pizza and beer?" I suggested. "My treat. Anchovies and catnip, in your honor."

She smirked at me. "It would have to be half acorns ... "

"Are you implying I'm nuts?"

"You said it, not me. So, how long have you got that body for?"

"All night long, if you want. Personally, I've always thought I look especially dashing in red fur."

"I want to get that big bushy tail of yours out onto the dance floor and see what you can do with it."

"Nothing I'm sure you couldn't counter with some catlike moves of your own ... "

Yes, Tsar and I could really drive each other crazy sometimes, but we also had a great deal of respect for one another too. And sometimes, more than respect.

When you're constantly trying on different bodies, each one with its own unique feel and way of perceiving the world around you, it'd be a bit of a wasted opportunity not to experience life to the fullest during your time In Fur. All of the jaunters here did it; call it one of the fringe benefits of the job. And the usual prohibitions against inter-office dalliances didn't really apply. I mean, if two colleagues shared intimacies when they were, say, a fox and a hare (or a squirrel and cat, just for the sake of argument), and the next day those same two people were a Neanderthal and an Andromedan, then they weren't really still the same people, were they?

Sounds confusing, I know. But once you got used to it, it was the most natural thing in the world. In the multiverse, for that matter.

We walked together down the corridor, the friction of our latest tussle already cooling. Many others passed us, wearing various human, animal and alien forms. Tsarmina's staff had grown quite large these days, and the hallways were always bustling.

"Too bad about Felldoh," Tsar gave a consoling sigh. "I wonder if there's any timeline in which he survives the Battle of Marshank?"

"Probably a great many," I said. "All possible realities exist, remember?"

"Well, do me a favor," she chided with a sly smile, "and wait awhile before you go running out looking for any of them!"


End file.
